Friday, February 17, 2012

PolitiFiction

(Republican Florida U.S. Sen. Marco) Rubio said that the majority of Americans are conservative. A respected ongoing poll from Gallup shows that conservatives are the largest ideological group, but they don’t cross the 50 percent threshold. So we rate his statement Mostly True.

I'm a big fan of the idea of fact-checking sites, but if they lose sight of what a fact is, their rulings become useless.

What's particularly interesting here is that PolitiFact Texas rated Ron Paul's statement "false" when he claimed "The majority of the American people believe we should have a gold standard and not a paper standard" for U.S. currency, when in fact only 44 percent beleive that, according to polling.

Posted at 04:50:42 PM

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--How Politifact can twist Rubio's statement into something "mostly true" is mystifying. Does it not know the difference between a "majority" and a "plurality"?

I think what they were trying to say is that the Conservatives make up the largest of the self-identified political groupings, which I confess, sad to say, is impressive enough.

ZORN REPLY -- A lot of this come out of PolitiFact's insistence on labeling every statement with some gradation which forces them to at times charitably translate the statement, at times not. A famous example recently had them labeling a job creation claim by Obama as false even though the numbers were right because they said they believed Obama was implying that HE was responsible for the job growth, when that is a disputed assertion.
That's just a huge thicket of weeds to wade into, giving a statement like that a grade.
From what I know, PF's reporting is otherwise spot on.

First of all, you are not doing anything to improve your credibility by quoting commentators from MSNBC. I mean, what would you say if I supported all my argments by quoting people from FOX? See? It cuts both ways.

Second, I'm sure that as soon as PolitiFact supports a Democratic claim or shoots down a Republican claim, all will be forgiven and it will be a reputable site once again.

Third, maybe conservatives are not a majority, but there are sure a lot more of us than there are of you.

PolitiFact has taken heat for calling b.s. on conservatives or Republicans more than they do on liberals or Democrats. I don't know if that's true, but one of the best and most important aspects of the relatively recent fact-checking ethos that PolitiFact embodies is that balance as such isn't the goal and doesn't matter. When you make it the goal, then you may convey a false balance -- say, by putting total garbage on equal footing with a relatively honest position -- that leaves media consumers with the wrong impression. So, the idea is, call 'em as you see 'em, let the chips fall where they may, and if you've done a good job, and there's still an imbalance, then that just means that one side tells more or bigger whoppers more of the time, which is certainly possible. But I bet there's still a lot of discomfort with that outcome -- it doesn't feel right or fair, and, some may worry, doesn't *look* right or fair. So, there may be some perhaps unspoken or even unconscious desire to correct for that impression, to give a liberal a hard time or a conservative a pass just to make a show of objectivity, which merely repeats the false balance error that clear-headed fact checking is supposed to avoid. Maybe that's what's going on here.

Anyway, the question of labels and ideological identification is complicated by what the labels really mean. "Conservative," I think, tends to carry a more positive connotation in this country than its opposite "liberal," and has done for some time. Even Obama, I believe, has acknowledged, not with regret, that America is a small-c conservative country. We're not radical, we're suspicious of grand ideology, we're of a more pragmatic frame of mind than, perhaps, all those European-capital dwellers from whom Obama supposedly takes his inspiration. But that doesn't mean that America is conservative in the way that the Tea Party is and, increasingly, the way the Republican party is.

The question is, what do people actually support? I think you'll find that what is touted as a "true" conservative agenda is a very hard sell. People do not oppose tax increases on the wealthy, as conservative politicians steadfastly do. People do not support the radical changes to Medicare -- its elimination as we know it -- that conservative politicians support. The actual content of the health care reform act enjoys public support. You don't have to be a "liberal" to part ways with conservative politicians on "social issues," as the contraception flap reveals. A plurality of the country may be quote-unquote conservative, but, issue for issue, a post-Clinton, moderate Democrat -- yes, like Obama -- far better represents popular opinion than, say, Rick Santorum. I would say Mitt Romney, but he apparently has no genuine viewpoints. Massachusetts Romney was relatively reasonable. Running-for-the-nomination Romney isn't.

Another pathetic case of someone not admitting his error and moving on. Majority is simply the wrong word, and plurality is exactly the correct word. There is NO gray area here. Period. It is just plain stupid for Adair not to acknowledge the mistake.

Dienne, be honest. If a two reporters reported on the same story, and you knew nothing about them except one was from FOX and one was from MSNBC, which one would you choose to listen to? I thought so.

You and I both know that while there is no gray area in the overall truth of most statements, trying to determine to truth is another thing. A lot of times choosing to believe a statement made by public officials is a crap shoot.

And as for public schools, I can verify they are NOT teaching the difference between fact and opinions, as well as a lot of other things (reading, spelling, grammar, writing, artithmetic, etc.) I teach at a state university and most of my students are from public schools. More than half of them are so unprepared that they are placed in the most remedial classes for mathematics and writing. Whoever "taught" them and gave them a diploma should be fired.
This is not a conservative or liberal problem, it's an American problem.

"majority -- 2: a number greater than half of a total; also: the excess of this number over the remainder."

I think Politifact just considered the second part of this definition in reference to Rubio's statement.

Either way, they admitted the number DIDN'T cross the 50% threshold while calling the statement Mostly True.

Come on, people, do you really believe American voters are this stupid? That we'll take a completely black or white fact and agree to a "mostly true" shrug? Do you believe I'll ever trust any opinion you'll publish in the future?

I'm not surprised this turned into another attack on the public schools. But, anyone who expresses his political bigotry concerning who quotes/corrects others on the facts can't be taken seriously.

Wendy:
1. I wish you could make your case without using the "B" word, but since you used it, just be aware there is political bigotry on both sides. You hear it all the time by the Fox News haters.
2. I never said anything about public schools until Dienne felt the need to bring this up.

maybe conservatives are not a majority, but there are sure a lot more of us than there are of you.

Posted by: TomB | Friday, February 17, 2012 at 09:50 PM

=====================================

Yes Tom, and that's why the economy has been so screwed up for the past several years. Tell us: when will conservatives finally take responsibility for their screwing up of the economy and then actually try to work with Democrats to fix it?

@Pan, the bias is that the vast majority of journalists and commentators who publicly identify their affiliations are Democrats. Scandals like the "Journo-list" (where dozens of journalists and bloggers from well-respected sites essentially received daily talking points from Democratic sources) don't help matters. Regardless of whether someone tries to be objective, certainly personal biases come through unconsciously in many ways, such as decisions on what to cover vs. what not to cover.

As to the original question, Politifact's whole "mostly true, somewhat true" scale creates these sort of issues. They turn something objective into something subjective. I think in this particular case, they didn't want to claim it was "false" because they gave him the benefit of the doubt that he meant to say "more Americans are conservative than liberal," which the polls do show. That said, it is sloppy, and it is factually incorrect. Sometimes they don't give statements the benefit of the doubt and sometimes they do. They should just use "factually correct" or "factually incorrect" if they don't want to make judgments.

Wall Street has been overwhelmingly conservative (voting and supporting Republicans) for decades. Wall Street's bailout, TARP, was done by Republican George W. Bush. And right now, Wall Street is pouring millions into the PACs of Republican politicians at the national and state level.

Yes, raising taxes will fix the economy by returning to the progressive tax structure we had throughout the 20th century. Look at how loud the conservatives are whining about proposals to return the top tax rate to where it was under President Clinton. I don't know about you, but I'll take the economy under Democrat Clinton over Republican Dubya any day of the week.

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